AMA: TripActions Former Director of Demand Generation, Sruthi Kumar on Demand Generation Career Path

1) BE CLOSE TO THE NUMBERS. I cannot stress this enough. I was once told that this was my weakest spot–being metric driven. I quickly tried to rectify this and what I realized is that numbers could be my best friend. Once I got closer to the numbers, I was able to reframe them to tell the story I wanted to tell. (This is the hard skill I leaned into when I wanted to transition from field marketing to demand gen). 2) Be comfortable with writing. Sometimes on your teams, you won't always be the one producing content, but I do believe demand gen should be strong writers. This is the team that knows how to get people to sign up for a webinar and download a piece of content. If you are not close to your solution/product, team up with your PMM team and refer to messaging briefs to be able to write the content that are going to convert people into leads! Some of the strongest demand gen people I know all have different strengths, so nothing is a nice to have. It's just what makes them special. I know folks who are really strong writers, very creative, and very savvy with marketing tech. Lean into your strength and it will BECOME the hard skill the CMO/VP of Marketing interviewing you NEEDs on their team.

My favorite question to ask is "What is a program/campaign you are proud of and why?" I feel passionate about some of my past campaigns and I want to work with people who are also excited to do what we do. I also get to see if they value. Is it creativity? Is it growth hacking? Also they get share the value of the campaign through numbers and creative story telling. Also a fun perk is maybe walking away with some inspiration for future campaigns! 

My biggest frustration is the fact that sometimes programs work really well and then two months later, that same program will just not work. It's tough when you forecast a certain volume of new names or registrants coming in and it doesn't hit. There are some factors that influence this like seasonality (summer time or holiday months can influence the effectiveness of a program) or world events like a pandemic. While this is a frustration, it is the reason why demand gen leaders should have a good mix of programs every month/quarter in order to hit their pipeline goals, because that program you are banking on just may not hit.

I start making a list of what I want in my next role during my current role. I don't wait until anything is bad or tough, I just start compiling the list when inspiration hits me. (ex. Own a pipeline number, or report straight into the CMO). For the role itself I look for some of the items I write on my list, opportunity for career growth, and managers that I can learn from. In terms of the company itself I look for product-market fit, opportunity for company growth, understanding their sales stats, and a product that I feel excited about/passionate about. Most importantly I also look for a team that I like, because let's be real—we spend so much time with our coworkers, I need to like them!

Ask yourself these two questions: 1) Are you already performing at the level you are aspiring to be in? The best orgs won't promote you soley on tenure, but also with peformance leveling. If you're already performing at a director level, you will get promoted. You can ask your team for a career pathing guide so you have something to hold yourself to. (And also show it off to your manager) 2) Do you have the time? Recall your last 1-1 with your manager. Did you spend the time complaining about having too much work? Or share, I had a time management problem, but I took care of it and here is how. I will tell you right now, the person in the second scenario will get promoted. Promotions come with additional responsobility and therefore additional work. If you are perceived as someone who cannot handle the workload, unfortunately, you won't be the one getting the promotion. (Side note - if your workload is and hours are unreasonable, that is a different issue, but if you look around and see other people manager their workload, ask them for advice!) If your answers are yes to both, start having these conversations with your manager about what it will take/what they need to see from you to level up. Also, never underestimate your soft skills. If you can build inroads with sales, sdrs, and their leaders—you will be unstoppable and will quickly grow into a leader of the team!

This is a great question! Always use the metrics to support the story you are telling. You can get creative with this one and honestly— the world is your oyster when it comes to telling a story with metrics. So firstly, share your qualitative story. "Since I joined the team, we have diversified our programs and channels where we have been bringing in a bigger of volumes of names" Then you need to support that with a quantative story. - Where are your MQLs coming from? Are a majority coming from a new channel that you implemented? Look at the MoM change of this percentage and the volume of MQLs that have come from this one program (and share QoQ metrics). Some other metrics you could use: - Growth of the percentage of marketing sourced leads that turned into closed won deals/meetings with the sales team. (Ex. Did marketing originally infleunce 30% of sales qualified leads/or meetings and now it's 55% since you implemented your programs) - MoM growth of MQLs and other top of funnel metrics (like new names) since you joined the team or made a change

Tactical: - Be close to the metrics - Strong writer - Problem solver - Solid speaker (this helps when you are presenting to sales all hands or even internally to your own marketing team) Intangible: - Think about campaigns/programs with an integrated lense - Strong cross-communication skills with different teams - Understanding the strengths from others and your team

There is definitely not a single path for demand gen. I personally transitioned into demand gen from field marketing. I can't say there is a single path that makes more sense than the next, but I can say there were a few things that helped me make the seamless transition. 1) All the events I ran had a quantative goal along with a qualitative goal. All programs had success metrics attached to them so we could look back and understand was it sucessful or not. 2) The other was that I always had buy in from the sales, CSM, and other GTM teams. I would start with communicating that this path forward would help them hit their goals and then share how their partnership would bring it even more success. 3) Events are expensive! Field marketing and demand gen will always cost money. Learning how to communicate upwards to c-level and other leadership positions is key. Whether you are on the content team, product marketing team, or a fellow field marketer and want to transition into demand gen, focus on proving value of your programs, have a close relationship with sales, and be ready to prove value of your demand gen mix to leadership. 

I think coming from field marketing has been a huge driving force into helping me getting a demand gen leadership role. Field marketing opened up doors for me to: 1) Build massive integrated campaigns that coordinated with the whole GTM team (Sales, SDR, CSM) to come together to pull these off successfully. There were also activation of a lot of channels to make these programs successfuel so strategizing email outreach, sales outreach, direct mail, tie ins with webinars, website, and more helped me always think of things as connected. 2) Field marketers know something can always go wrong. Whether the event is in-person or virtual, I always knew how to think on my feet and problem solve. So now as a demand gen leader, if I see a program underperforming that we need to improve quickly, I am ready to think of fast and creative ideas so hopefully bring the program back to life. 3) The team members that helped me land a demand gen role are the marketing ops and content marketing folks I teamed up with at my last role. Learning how to effectively communicate the success of my programs using metrics and words has helped me exponentially!

This one is going to be simple. Focus on being close to the numbers and be ready to be creative! I do think there are some foundational pieces to building a demand generation engine. The first is having a balanced program mix, make sure are bringing names in a consistent and steady flow. Being close to the numbers helps understanding what channels are working, which channels to invest more time & money in, and making sure these are the programs that convert to meetings and closed won. Once you have that foundational piece, focus on getting creative. At the end of the day, most demand gen teams are running the same types of programs—webinars, emails, etc. It's up to you as the leader of your team to think out of the box. Tip: Look at those programs that are converting well and see how you can hypercharge them by adding a gift card incentive for taking a meeting!

I would love to be a CMO one day, and I do think owning the Demand Generation function is a good way to get there. Here are some of the strengths that I have seen from the CMOs I have respected the most: 1) Being close to the numbers - even if you aren't the one owning the direct number, a great CMO will understand what is happening in their pipeline so they can communicatr with sales. 2) Leading by example - good people want to work for other good people. A CMO who leads by example will be able to build a good team with people who help build each other up. 3) Get creative with tech stack and tactics - successful CMOs are looking at how their tech stack helps them reach their goals and aren't afraid to switch it up. I don't know about you, but to me those are all skills Demand Gen leaders should have which translate directly into being a CMO ;)